Being the amazing, true-to-life adventures and (very likely) misadventures of a writer who seeks to take his education, activism and seemingly boundless energy to North Minneapolis, (NoMi) to help with a process of turning a rapidly revitalizing neighborhood into something approaching Urban Utopia. I am here to be near my child. From 02/08 to 06/15 this blog pushed free speech to the envelope, so others could take heart and speak unafraid. Email me at hoffjohnw@gmail.com

Monday, October 17, 2011

Hennepin County Jail Roster-O-Rama! August 29 To October 17, 2011

Stock photo and blog post by John Hoff

Last night I watched "True Grit" for the umpteenth time on my laptop. (The recent remake, I mean, not the classic with John Wayne)

On a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan, a laptop is what you might call a "home entertainment center." I only have a limited number of movie files in that computer so...

True Grit. Again.

The reason I mention this is because of something the main character, Mattie Ross, says at the end of the movie: Time just gets away from us. So it is I haven't published the Hennepin County Jail Roster since, oh my word, August 29....

Let us review the premise of this little enterprise, shall we? The jail roster is a public document. Anybody can pull it up at any time. However, it is in a part of the internet not crawled by Google bots. So the data doesn't end up on search engines. Furthermore, once somebody is released from the jail, that data goes away soon after.

That's where this blog comes in. I consider it a valuable public service to preserve and publish the data. The more pissed-off former jail denizens send me angry emails, the more convinced I become of the rightness of my actions.

Everybody is, of course, legally innocent until proven guilty.

However, as a matter of common sense and common knowledge, the vast majority will be found guilty of SOMETHING. And as Mattie Ross said, "You must pay for everything in this world, one way or another."

Therefore, without further ado (except the "ado" that will be hitting my email inbox, as usual) here is your jail roster, kids.